Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

“I need to know what it is,” he said when she complained about keeping it.

Norma said she was pretty sure she did know what it was, and it was better dying there.

“It’s gonna take over the soul of my folk, you don’t deal with it.” She winced as the gauze settled over her cheek. “Look at them outside.”

Andrew was more interested in looking at the thing that slumped and squirmed behind the fogged glass. But he got up and cracked the door open.

The families had built a bonfire in the middle of the village. When he and Norma had stolen off back to the house, they were already gathering sticks for it. Andrew objected—he wanted to examine Loo’s body before they cremated it. But Hank had insisted the fire was not to burn poor Loo.

“We ain’t to burn the Mother,” he said, as though that explained everything.

And before Andrew could say anything else, Norma whispered to him: “Don’t fight him. You got wounds to tend, Doctor.”

Now the fire was roaring, billowing smoke into the pines, over the roofs of the other shacks up here. The forest was filled with the sound of it crackling, of it whistling.

“They’re fightin’ it best they can,” said Norma. “Smoke distracts them. But… it’s goin’ to be a hard fight. They could be headin’ to the hill, before too long. Worshipping.” She said the word the way other old women might say “fornicating.”

Andrew shook his head. “I thought you folk didn’t care for God and priests.”

“Faerie King’s changing ’em. Working ’em.”

“Why are they like that and you all are free?”

“I’m older,” said Norma. “They’re younger. They’re all more one family then I am.”

Andrew nodded. Norma was older—in terms of her own germ plasm, she was a generation or two removed from most of these others.

“And the Juke does best in a family.”

She shrugged. “If I let it, over time it’ll get to me too.”

“I met one of those things, you know,” he said. “At the hanging tree.”

She didn’t say anything—just squinted at the smoke coming up.

Andrew thought back, to that small face he’d seen for a moment, the thing crouched on his chest. He thought about the creature that had gone after Jason in the quarantine. The quarantine where Dr. Bergstrom had hidden away his own Faerie King, the strange hermaphrodite Mister Juke. Hidden away, like, Andrew thought now, some secret, mystical treasure. A treasure that he would not let an outsider—an infidel—a nigger—like Andrew Waggoner lay eyes upon.

“If they fail… They’re going to want the baby Juke,” said Andrew. “Aren’t they?”

“They think you’re carin’ for it,” said Norma. “That’s the only reason they’re leavin’ you alone. Soon, I’ll be able to help them. But soon ain’t now.”

He let the door close slowly and turned to look at her. “You have a pretty good idea about how this goes. Norma, have you seen this happen before?”

She looked back at the jar. From inside, the thing might have been peering out. She nodded slowly.

Andrew took another stab in the dark. “Feeger,” he said. “That doesn’t mean feeble, does it?”

Norma shook her head. “It don’t mean feeble,” she said. “It’s a name—a family, lived here as long as us.”

“And Hank doesn’t want to ‘turn Feeger.’ That means—this family, they fell into the thrall?”

“We should kill that thing,” said Norma, stepping toward it and staring at it. “Cover its air-holes and let it smother.”

§

Andrew kept Norma clear of the jar, but he wasn’t trying save the thing’s life. He was being a scientist, he told himself: staying near, watching it through the glass, wishing again he had something to write on to record his observations. Because damnation, they were inconstant.

Was it elongate, mantis-like? A fat toad, with silvery-grey flesh pressed against the side of the glass like bloated fruit in a preserve?

A baby?

Light?

It might have been all of those things at one time or another. Notes might have helped, later.

It sat still for an hour, staring out with black and unblinking eyes. Then it became agitated, throwing itself against the sides of the jar. Andrew held it still so it wouldn’t shatter; this made the creature angrier. It whistled—that sound that Andrew had heard before, and he surmised was the thing’s speech. He sent Norma to the door, to see if anyone were coming but no one was—they were all in their mystical trance around the bonfire.

“You make them see God,” said Andrew as the thing slid down the side of the jar, like it was falling into despair. “That’s how it works, isn’t it? You make them see God with your narcotic fumes, and so they think they’re special, and that makes them think you are special. They start to worship. That how it works?”

The thing ran a clawed hand down the glass.

“Then what happens? You get bigger, with all the food they give you—and you go lay your eggs in one of their girls? And so it goes?”

“Hey,” said Norma. “Don’t be talkin’ to it. That’s how it starts!”